On Wednesday of this week, Breitbart News will be launching a new feature/vertical on our website called “The Conversation.” Look for it in the navigation bar.

The Conversation will be a place where our readers can watch an ongoing dialogue amongst a select group of thought leaders that includes Ace of Spades, Iowahawk, David Webb, Shark Tank, DocZero, Nice Deb, Jerome Hudson, Lisa De Pasquale, William A. Jacobson of Legal Insurrection, and Adam Baldwin, along with John Nolte, Ben Shapiro, Larry O’Connor, Sonnie Johnson, Liberty Chick, Jon David Kahn, as well as other writers and contributors from Breitbart News.

Also, look for regular guest contributors stopping by—there are sure to be some nice surprises, and we fully expect the roster to expand and evolve—incorporating more friends and more leading voices from inside and outside the company.

When we first sat down to redesign the website, The Conversation was always a central part of Andrew Breitbart’s vision. He loved dialogue and the free flow of ideas. He loved conversation and was a always a fierce proponent of more voices, not fewer—so don’t be surprised to read some alternative political views. Andrew also envisioned a place where bloggers and citizen journalists who might not have another way of conversing, interacting, and reacting publicly with each other, could do so in one central location.

Yes, you read right. Nice Deb has joined the Breitbart team. I can’t tell you how proud and honored I feel to be part of the late great Andrew Breitbart’s vision – and in such great company. Some of us have been talking to each other on the site for the past week – although it’s not yet public. I can promise you one thing – The Conversation will never be dull.

I will continue to blog here, at Nice Deb, as always. The idea behind The Conversation, is to keep the posts short and casual – longer than a tweet, but shorter than a full length post, so I don’t see it eating up too much of my time.

Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist and Fox News Analyst is a proponent of school choice. He said the issue is not about ideology, it’s about our kids, and everybody’s solutions should be on the table.

“Any way we can improve education – from public school to home school and everything in between should be celebrated, and tested, and brought to the table, regardless of party.”

The tour will travel to Chicago, tomorrow, where NSCW OutReach Coordinator, David Spielman tells me, a sizable crowd (in the thousands) is expected.

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Big Journalism is all over that sham of an interview Obama and Hillary gave to Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes, Sunday. If you spared yourselves the frustration of watching it, John Nolte and Larry O’Conner can fill you in. It was as precisely as pathetic as you thought it would be.

Apparently the media’s desire to serve The State (at least for as long as Barack Obama heads The State) is so strong that the State now trumps The Scoop. Sunday, both ABC News and CBS News had slow-and-over-the-plate opportunities that would make any objective journalist salivate. Instead, though, both organizations chose to bend over backwards to ensure no political harm was done to the Democratic party, and most especially, to the Obama White House.

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Early last week, outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went before both chambers of congress to testify about the four Americans murdered by terrorists in Libya. Democrats swooned as feckless, unprepared Republicans had their heads handed to them by Madam Secretary. When it was all over and Hillary stood in triumph on a stack of bloodied, bruised and bewildered Republicans, the unanswered questions remained legion and Hillary literally asked “What difference does it make” if the White House lied to the American people for two weeks.

Let’s play the game again: Imagine you’re the first journalist to get a crack at Hillary after this appearance. What journalist wouldn’t be salivating at the opportunity to have the last word on Libya? Any journalist paying attention would now know all the Administration talking points and all the rhetorical tricks. Who wouldn’t want to swoop in and finally be the journalist to pin the Administration down?

Well, that would CBS News’s Steve Kroft, Obama’s go-to guy, who had all kinds of time with both Hillary and Obama Sunday night. But instead of being a journalist, Kroft chose to be Oprah. This wasn’t an interview, it was a thirty-minute “Hillary 2016” commercial.

Only a few days after CBS News’ intrepid investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson detailed a comprehensive list of questions the White House has refused to answer regarding the terrorist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, the network had the opportunity to finally get some of those answers from Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama as they both sat with Steve Kroft for an exclusive interview on 60 Minutes.

We imagine Ms. Attkisson might have thrown a handful of popcorn at her television as she watched the segment Sunday night when her colleague gently broached the Benghazi subject: (Keep reading at the link.)

O’Conner’s right: “If CBS News really wanted to make news, they should have turned the interview over to Attkisson, or White House correspondent Major Garret.” But of course, we’re not allowed to see the media’s God’s bleed.

When Steve Kroft of CBS News finally got around to asking President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton about the terrorist attacks in Benghazi resulting in the death of four brave Americans, President Obama decided it would be a good time to go for laughs. (Video at link.)

What a media era we live in where Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren will have to pull her punches with outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton if she’s to avoid being pilloried by everyone else in media. My guess, though, is that Greta will go for it and that we’ll learn more from her interview Tuesday night than we will from all the other networks combined.

We’ll see, but I’ve always suspected that Greta was a PUMA – one of the Clinton supporters from 2008 who had no use for Obama, but greatly admired Hillary. Van Susteren vigorously came to her defense on GretaWire back in December when some of her colleagues at Fox News were a “tad bit sarcastic on the air” about her health.

Kirsten Powers, et al, were decidedly not impressed with the whole softball-lobbing spectacle on Fox News this morning, and also wondered — what does this level of all-too-friendly endorsement mean for Obama’s loyal vice president?

It was really something you would expect from like, the state-run media. It was that kind of level of propaganda as far as I’m concerned. … I can understand maybe in agreeing to the interview, letting them have maybe one softball question in the beginning and then move on to more important things. This was a joke. Just not challenging basic things like the president claiming that Hillary’s been a great secretary of state in part because they have dismantled Al Qaeda. Now, I’m sorry, is anyone paying attention to what’s going on in North Africa? Why is the president not asked about Algeria, Mali, Libya? These are front and center in the news right now.

The congressional hearings on Benghazi last week led me to question just when it was that public integrity ceased to matter. After some research, I came to an unexpectedly specific answer — January 26, 1992, the day America first met Hillary Clinton.

Earlier that month, Arkansas state employee Gennifer Flowers confessed to a tabloid that she and Bill Clinton had engaged in a 12-year affair. In a desperate attempt to save Bill’s candidacy for president, the Clintons agreed to be interviewed by Steve Kroft on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

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…Among the people the Clintons reached out to that year — in this case, through a proxy — was Sally Perdue, a former Miss Arkansas and Clinton paramour. “[The proxy] said that there were people in high places who were anxious about me and they wanted me to know that keeping my mouth shut would be worthwhile,” Perdue would later relate. “Worthwhile” meant a GS-11 or higher job with the federal government. If she turned down the offer and talked to the media, “He couldn’t guarantee what would happen to my pretty little legs.”

Perdue was the least of the Clintons’ problems in 1992. More potentially troublesome were the women that Clinton had criminally assaulted or humiliated — Juanita Broaddrick, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, and Paula Jones among others. Jones, though not raped like Broaddrick or attacked like Gracen, would prove Bill Clinton’s undoing.

Later in the 60 Minutes interview, Bill swore, “I have absolutely leveled with the American people.” Of course, he did no such thing, and Kroft knew it. Skeptically, Kroft asked Bill if he thought the interview would help quiet the furor. Clinton answered, “That’s up to the American people and to some extent up to the press. This will test the character of the press. It is not only my character that has been tested.”

By Clinton standards, the media would pass the test, ace it even, and at their prompting, so would the public. Clinton had given the media just enough cover to “move on.” This was their turning point. After twelve years of Reagan and Bush, they embraced their inner liberal and abandoned their role as watchdogs. America has always had scoundrels, but never before had the media collectively championed them.

Yeah – It didn’t start with Obama. I found election day 1992 more crushing than 2008 or 2012, because that’s when I realized how deeply in bed with the left the MSM had become – changing the face of US politics forever.

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There are (count them) three posts from Michelle Malkin, today on amnesty:

According to a five-page document provided to POLITICO, the sweeping proposal — agreed to in principle by eight senators — would seek to overhaul the legal immigration system as well as create a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s roughly 11 million illegal immigrants. But establishing that pathway would depend on whether the U.S. first implements stricter border enforcement measures and new rules ensuring immigrants have left the country in compliance with their visas. Young people brought to the country as children illegally and seasonal agriculture industry workers would be given a faster path to citizenship.

If the Kabuki promise of “securing the border first” sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same empty, bullcrap promise that shamnesty peddlers have pitched since the Reagan years.

Today, pols on both sides of the aisle have made illegal alien amnesty their Job Number One of 2013 — and with it, the ever-expanding welfare state. As I pointed out earlier this morning, the Obama administration continues to defy federal immigration statutes barring benefits for immigrants and is aggressively pushing food stamps among the non-citizen population.

Then there’s the daunting impact of amnesty on the already-disastrous Obamacare regime.

Comprehensive immigration reform could make millions of people suddenly eligible for assistance under President Obama’s healthcare law, assuming a final deal paves the way for undocumented immigrants to receive papers.

In an interview with The New Republic, President Barack Obama suggested he regularly goes skeet shooting with guests at Camp David.

“[U]p at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,” Obama said. “Not the girls, but oftentimes guests of mine go up there. And I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations. And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake. Part of being able to move this forward is understanding the reality of guns in urban areas are very different from the realities of guns in rural areas.”

“And if you grew up and your dad gave you a hunting rifle when you were ten, and you went out and spent the day with him and your uncles, and that became part of your family’s traditions, you can see why you’d be pretty protective of that,” Obama added. “So it’s trying to bridge those gaps that I think is going to be part of the biggest task over the next several months. And that means that advocates of gun control have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes.”

So generous of him to allow Americans to keep their family heirlooms. What that has to do with the 2nd Amendment, I don’t know, but all this “profound respect” Obama claims to have for America’s gun culture certainly doesn’t square with what he told economist and pro-gun advocate, John Lott when they chatted briefly about guns at the University of Chicago years ago: “I don’t believe people should be able to own guns,” he allegedly said.That Obama does square with a certain Chicago pol, who when running for State office in 1995, filled out a questionnaireshowing support for state laws to ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns, along with other various and sundry hard left positions.

Of course, when the questionnaire emerged in 2007, it was very inconvenient to Obama the presidential contender, so even though his own handwriting was on it, a staffer got blamed for filling it out. “I never saw or approved the questionnaire”, Obama told Politico.

The dirty little secret being obscured by O’s ode to the joys of hunting skeet is that the White House is slowly easing off a bit on the big gun-control push. OFA chose Friday afternoon, when most people are tuning out of politics for the weekend, to send an e-mail urging supporters to start calling congressional offices and pressuring them on guns. This morning, Democratic sources are grumbling to BuzzFeed that gun control may end up being to Obama’s second term what Social Security privatization was to Bush’s.

Have you heard much about President Obama’s $787,000,000,000 economic “stimulus” (now estimated to cost $831,000,000,000) lately? In its last report, published in 2011, the president’s own Council of Economic Advisors released an estimate showing that, for every $317,000 in “stimulus” spending that had by then gone out the door, only one job had been created or saved. Even in Washington, that’s not considered good bang for the buck.

Moreover, that was the fifth consecutive “stimulus” report that showed this number getting progressively worse.

Alas, that was the last report we’ve seen. Never mind that Section 1513 of the “stimulus” legislation, which Obama spearheaded and signed into law, requires the executive branch to submit a new report every three months

The Department of Homeland Security is seeking to acquire 7,000 5.56x45mm NATO “personal defense weapons” (PDW) — also known as “assault weapons” when owned by civilians. The solicitation, originally posted on June 7, 2012, comes to light as the Obama administration is calling for a ban on semi-automatic rifles and high capacity magazines.

Citing a General Service Administration (GSA) request for proposal (RFP), Steve McGough of RadioViceOnline.com reports that DHS is asking for the 7,000 “select-fire” firearms because they are “suitable for personal defense use in close quarters.” The term select-fire means the weapon can be both semi-automatic and automatic. Civilians are prohibited from obtaining these kinds of weapons.

Meanwhile, the President is just getting warmed up. Now he wants to further lighten our wallets by closing tax code loopholes, an idea he rejected just two months ago when Republican Speaker John Boehner proposed it.

That was then. Now that the President has his rate increases, he’s back for more even money via the route he just recently dismissed. He’s the Leviathan’s perpetual Oliver Twist. This is his warped definition of “tax reform” – raised rates, closed loopholes and entirely new taxes (beware the Value Added Tax [VAT]).

But we need not cede to the Left the term or the idea of “tax reform.” Congressional Republicans need to immediately put forward proactive, economy-positive ideas. Real reform is simple – and simple to message. What we should do is:

According to Boehner’s advisers, the speaker appreciates Ryan’s willingness to be a conduit between the leadership and the House GOP’s many blocs. Conservatives, for their part, appreciate Ryan’s willingness to push for conservative policy when he’s meeting with Boehner.

“I’ve known the speaker for a long time. We’re both midwestern guys, and I went to college in his district,” Ryan says. “We’ve always gotten along. But we’re also of different generations. We have different styles. But we do understand each other quite well, and we listen to each other.”

Ryan says his close relationship with Boehner is, more than anything, about his desire for Republican unity in a period of Democratic control. “Forget the palace intrigue,” Ryan says, when I press him for more details about their friendship. “I’m looking to build a unified conference and a coherent strategy, even if they inevitably require varying tactics.

So we are loved by people who appreciate our work and we’re revered by the people who hate us. Our 2012 work was mostly on voter fraud. We’ve also exposed a lot of corruption at major taxpayer-funded institutions like NPR, ACORN and things like that. Some of these stories have actually landed on the desks of the Attorney General or Congress and have caused a lot of major change.

Things are getting very ugly in Egypt. It’s not so much a new violence as it is the lingering chaos unleashed by Tahrir Square and exploited by various factions. Western governments and domestic voters backed Morsi in the hopes that he would provide stability, but after the authorities temporarily lost control of Port Said and Morsi unilaterally declared a State of Emergency in three cities, in violation of his own constitution, stability is nowhere to be found.

With 44 dead, as of now, the Egyptian pound imploding and Morsi looking increasingly unable and unwilling to fix the economic problems that caused the Jan 25 Revolution, Egypt may be headed for another revolution.

Jim – I passed a convoy of olive drab unmarked 40 foot tractor trailers each with four 10 yard ammo bunker boxes chained to them and unmarked armored Hum-Vee’s heading north on I-95 in Brevard County, Florida this past Thursday morning. The “govt” is positioning these ammo storage boxes, I have been told, in strategic places in population centers around the country. They are usually painted olive drab and are unmarked except for indistinguishable numbers/letters probably for inventory, routing, etc.

Obma’s Homeland Security Department has purchased 1.4 billion rounds of ammunition – that is not a typo — during the last six months.

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National School Choice Week Whistle Stop Tour kicked off Friday, in LA where 750 people came out to support school choice. Saturday, the tour stopped in Albuquerque, and now it’s heading for Topeka and Kansas City where they’ll be celebrating the successes of public charter schools, online and digital learning, homeschooling and public school choice in the Show Me State.

As the National School Choice Week Special makes its way through the midwest, join us as we discuss the historical impact of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision and its lasting impact on educational equality.

In addition to School Choice Week President Andrew Campanella, speakers will also include Lisa Snell, Reason Foundation Director of Education and Child Welfare, and Lisa Graham Keegan, a nationally recognized education reform pioneer who served as Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction. The event will also feature remarks from parents and students positively benefiting from school choice programs.

Join us in the beautiful Great Hall at Union Station for a huge bash to celebrate National School Choice Week 2013. We’ll be celebrating the successes of public charter schools, online and digital learning, homeschooling and public school choice in the Show Me State. The party is free to attend, and includes appetizers and sodas. There will be a cash bar. Please RSVP to attend. Dress is casual.

We’re excited to welcome several special guests, including the following:

The goal of this tour is to “demonstrate overwhelming support, and demand, for school choice…while shining a positive spotlight on the hundreds of organizations, thousands of schools, and millions of Americans working every day to increase access to great schools in our country.”

If you live in the area of any of these stops – please come out to show your support!

National School Choice Week 2013 kicked off Friday night at a packed house in Phoenix, Arizona. The annual event, which this year runs from Jan. 27 to Feb. 2, highlights a diverse selection of educational options for all kids. It made sense to launch this year’s effort in Arizona, a pioneer in school choice initiatives.

With more than 7,000 attendees and thousands more watching online, this was the biggest kickoff ever for National School Choice Week. The occasion is just the first of more than 3,500 independently planned special events that will be held across all 50 states.

Much of the crowd was made up of Arizona students who have benefited from the state’s dynamic school choice environment. With the first education reform laws passed in 1994, the Grand Canyon State has lead the nation in empowering parents to choose what’s best for their children’s academic success.

The students enjoyed a 45-minute set by the Jonas Brothers, but also heard from several speakers, including education reform pioneer Lisa Graham Keegan, co-founder of EduPrize Schools JoAnna Curtis, Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, and several award-winning students.